Free Krozair of Kregen by Alan Burt Akers Page B

up tightly between my legs and tucked in the end. I picked up the Krozair longsword.
    “Now I’m ready to finish this little lot.”
    We belted back down the passage. Our backs were secure. We had only to surge forward along the swifter and take or slay all the Green and the ship would be ours.
    A dead marine lay at the corridor entrance. I bent and ripped off his belt and buckled it up about the red flag I used, without blasphemy, in all honor, as a loincloth. We went into the fight like leems. I felt rejuvenated. How ridiculous and petty it must seem that a piece of red cloth could wreak so great a change! But the true change was wrought by the Krozair longsword. The blade flamed. The balance was perfect. I felt the power in my fists and I battled forward, bellowed for my men, and together, yelling, “Zair! Zair!” we catapulted the Greens from the quarterdeck, drove them along the upper gangway. More and more slaves poured up from below, whirling bights of chain.
    The uproar continued.
    I took time to step back as a Grodnim dropped under the blade, and darted a quick and savage look at
Pearl.
Yes, the fighting there flowed forward, as did the fighting in
Vengeance Mortil.
    A
perverse desire grew in me to clear this swifter before Rukker cleared his. I shouted again and roared on, cutting into the last resistance. The Krozair brand sheared through mail where the shortsword would have bounced. We tore into the dying remnants of the resistance and, suddenly, we were on the forecastle with the beakhead lifted, and there were no more adversaries to taste our steel.
    The men in the swifter at my back began cheering.
    I looked across the gap of water at
Pearl.
Fighting boiled across her forecastle where a knot of men in the green resisted to the end. I saw the Katakis — fewer of them now — battling in the front of the struggle. Rukker was there, a giant figure striking with sword and tail-blade.
    Springing onto the bulwark, I put my left hand to my mouth — my right was bloodier than my left — and I lifted up my voice and shouted in right jocular fashion.
    “Hai! Rukker! What’s holding you up?”
    He heard.
    The Kataki devil heard. I saw a Grodnim head fly into the air and Rukker stormed onto the starboard bulwark, springing up to glare across at me.
    “We have cleared all! There are no skulkers at our backs!”
    “And no slaves to pull the oars, either.”
    He didn’t like that.
    “We have taken this Takroti-forsaken ship! That is what matters.”
    “You may have taken her — but have you slaves to man her?”
    “I do not wish to discuss that.”
    I heard a gurgling laugh and looked back and there was Vax holding his guts and laughing. Well, it was funny, of course; but I had no desire to be stranded without oar-slaves by that Kataki idiot over there.
    Anyway, there was every chance that our ram had done
Pearl
too serious a mischief underwater to make her seaworthy. That must be looked at, at once, and the man to do the looking was Fazhan ti Rozilloi, ship-Hikdar. I bellowed to Duhrra to sort out the men here, told Vax to see about chaining up the new slaves who had so lately been sailors and soldier-marines of Grodnim, and took myself off aft. Fazhan was cleaning his sword. I had had no time. The beautiful Krozair blade gleamed red in the lights of Antares.
    “Hai Jikai, Dak!” Fazhan greeted me.
    I pondered for perhaps a half mur. Was this a Jikai?
    Perhaps.
    It was most certainly not a sufficiently high enough High Jikai to enroll me once more in the Krozairs of Zy, that was for sure.
    “Is
Pearl
seaworthy, after we struck her?”
    He saw my face. “I will see, at once.” He ran off.
    In the nature of things there was a great deal of confusion. Released slaves, all naked and screaming, surged about, and I knew there would be no Grodnim whip-Deldars to chain down to the rowing benches. I saw men I thought must be of some importance — or, rather, men who had been important before they’d been